Tim Hetherington: I was sent on assignment, so it wasn’t a project that I researched and decided to do. I just got assigned with him [Sebastian Junger]. When I went, I just saw it as I’m going on assignment for Vanity Fair. I didn’t have any expectations. If I did have any expectations, I thought it would be a quiet assignment. I thought we would have a quiet time walking in the mountains and meeting with village elders and drinking tea.
It was an incredible story because the fighting in Afghanistan, as the Americans call it, there was a lot of kinetic activity. The group of soldiers we ended up with, they were just an amazing bunch of guys. The best story of the stories you can get a handle on. They are a microcosm of the bigger story. One fifth of all fighting was taking place in that valley. One we had this amazing story in this microcosm space, I didn’t need to travel to any other place in Afghanistan. And I was with this group of soldiers right at the tip of the spear.
Epoch Times: Were you welcomed as journalists?
Mr. Hetherington: Journalists in the military community are usually treated with skepticism. Soldiers keep to themselves; it’s kind of yes sir, no sir—it’s very simple answers. The photographs I made when I first when out there were just soldiers in uniforms. What happened was a kind of profound intimacy between us, and representing that very intimate side of war that you don’t often see.
Epoch Times: You’ve worked and lived in more than one war zone, including Liberia and Afghanistan. What is your take on war at this point?
Mr. Hetherington: War is intimate. The very things that war brings out in a person are very intimate emotions—love, killing, friendship. Those are emotions that we not often see.
War is often represented as a political game. We usually are presented it in a political context and it is illustrated by manufactured emotions. I think what we managed to achieve in the film is a representation of a real kind of intimacy.
Epoch Times: One time you broke your leg but they told you it wasn’t broken, right?
Mr. Hetherington: I fell and broke my fibula and I was in a state of shock, and [the medic] said, “We’ve gotta keep going,” and said, “I think you just twisted it badly.”
The whole line of guys was waiting for me. I did not want to hold them up. We were on a side of a mountain with very little cover; it’s the middle of the night. If we’re on the mountainside [in the morning], we would be very exposed. They operated on it in Bagram and put in a metal plate.
Epoch Times: You had to go back to the U.S. after your injury to rest and recover. Did you have thoughts of going back to Afghanistan as soon as possible?
Mr. Hetherington: I was like I just need to go back soon. They took a big screw out of me, and the next day I got on the plane. And when I got off the plane, the wound was weeping a bit. I went to see the doctors in Bagram, and they said, “Where are you going?” And I said, “I’m going to the Korengal Valley.”
I realized that if I kept talking to them about it they might not let me go, and I just walked out of there. It’s funny, you just want to get back into it. This guy, Kevin Rice, got shot in the stomach; he came back three months later with the scars and his wounds hadn’t healed properly, but he just wanted to be with his men. Once you got to the Korengal, you were with the guys.
Read More . . . Kinship
